The present invention relates to the field of systems for correlating sets of educational requirements. More particularly, the present invention relates to the field of systems for correlating learning activities to multiple sets of educational requirements.
Increasingly, teachers and school systems are called upon to align student learning activities with explicit educational objectives, such as state educational standards. Teachers"" course and lesson plans need to address individual components of such objectives, and school systems need to be able to demonstrate that learning activities have successfully addressed those objectives.
These requirements call upon teachers and school administrators to provide some form of accountability system furnishing documentation of alignment of learning activities to objectives at the level of individual learning activities. Curriculum and instruction must be aligned to objectives set forth in education standards and data must be provided as evidence that students are achieving learning outcomes expressed in the standards.
Publishers or authors of learning activities, from individual teachers to national publishers, need to be able to provide learning materials with integrated correlation data. Doing so enables teachers to use those materials with knowledge that they have been correlated to the relevant objectives they need to address.
Correlations are local in nature. That is, individual states (and in some cases individual school districts or even schools themselves) will adopt their own sets of educational objectives, to which teachers in those states or other areas must adhere. Thus, any learning materials meant to be used across states and school districts must be correlated to multiple sets of learning objectives in order to include the relevant objectives for any particular teacher""s or school""s use.
In addition to satisfying public school education requirements associated with learning objectives (e.g. state mandated standards), correlations of learning materials with very specific learning objectives can provide value to all learners and teachers, including those involved in private education, corporate education, home schooling, etc.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,823,789 discloses a system for correlating educational requirements, or standards sets, to lesson plans of educators. Additionally, the system correlates the same educational requirements to education resources. The educational requirements, lesson plans, and education resources are correlated via a single independent layer. The independent layer is comprised of statements describing educational content. Teachers, or other lesson plan authors, manually correlate lesson plan content to the statements. Similarly, the standards sets contain components, the components are also manually correlated with the statements. Thus, via the independent layer as intermediary and common currency, a correlation between lesson plans and standards within standards sets is accomplished. Further, education resources can be correlated to statements in the independent layer, thereby entering into the overall correlation scheme. Just as lesson plans can be correlated to standards via the independent layer intermediary, so can resources be correlated to the standards. Teachers are able to choose resources on the basis of the standards which they address. In this manner, the independent layer with accompanying statements acts as a hub in a correlation process between components of standards sets, lesson plans, and education resources.
A problem with the independent layer design is the cumbersome and tedious nature of the many-to-many correlation scheme. Standards sets may consist of hundreds of components correlating to nearly as many statements. The task of directly correlating a lesson plan to such an ungainly number of statements often times proves very time consuming and inefficient.
Another problem with the independent layer design is that only a single layer is provided. When multiple sets of standards need to be correlated to, the single layer design does not provide any aggregation of the multiple sets into related and manageable intermediate layers. Without such aggregation, the complexity of correlating a lesson plan to multiple standards sets is multiplied many-fold over the process of correlating a lesson plan to the hundreds of components of a single standards set.
A system and method of correlating learning materials with educational objectives generates a correlation between a plurality of sets of educational requirements and learning activities, and identifies the educational requirements to which a learning component of the learning activities is correlated. Teachers and authors accessing the correlating system are able to author and select learning components to be correlated to the plurality of educational requirements sets. An educational requirements set is a set of state educational standards, a set of school district educational standards or a set of corporate training or certification requirements. The correlation of educational components to the grouping of educational requirements and of learning components to a set of educational components are performed and stored by a server, preferably accessible over the internet through the public switched telephone network. Using the correlation system of the present invention, teachers and authors have the ability to develop lesson plans which are correlated to standards within the plurality of sets of educational requirements.
In one aspect of the present invention, a method of generating a correlation between a plurality of sets of educational requirements and learning activities includes the steps of aggregating educational requirements from one or more of the sets of educational requirements into a grouping of educational requirements having a common factor, generating a set of educational components including the educational requirements within the grouping, correlating the set of educational components to the grouping of educational requirements to generate a first set of correlations, and correlating a learning component of the learning activities to one or more educational components of the set of educational components to generate a second set of correlations. The steps of correlating the set of educational components to the grouping of educational requirements and correlating the learning component of the learning activities to the set of educational components are performed by a server. The step of correlating the learning component of the learning activities to one or more educational components of the set of educational components further comprises the step of manually selecting the educational components to which the learning component is correlated. The grouping, the set of educational components, the first set of correlations, and the second set of correlations are stored on a storage device coupled to the server. Preferably, the storage device is a database. The database is distributed into more than one physical location. The method further includes the step of establishing an internet connection with the server to provide and select the learning components to be correlated. The internet connection is established with a computer system at a remote location from the server. The learning components of the learning activities are lesson plans generated by teachers or authors. The learning components are generated by an authoring tool coupled to the storage device. A set of educational requirements is a set of state educational standards, a set of school district educational standards, or a set of corporate training requirements.
In another aspect of the present invention, a method of identifying educational requirements within a plurality of sets of educational requirements correlated to a learning component of a learning activity includes the steps of aggregating educational requirements from one or more of the sets of educational requirements into a grouping of educational requirements having a common factor, generating a set of educational components including the educational requirements within the grouping, correlating the set of educational components to the grouping of educational requirements to generate a first set of correlations, correlating the learning component of the learning activities to one or more educational components of the set of educational components to generate a second set of correlations, identifying educational components within the set of educational components by applying the second set of correlations to the learning component of the learning activities, and identifying educational requirements within the grouping of educational requirements by applying the first set of correlations to the identified educational components of the set of educational components. The steps of correlating the set of educational components to the grouping of educational requirements and correlating the learning component of the learning activities to the set of educational components are performed by a server. The steps of identifying educational components and identifying educational requirements are performed by the server. The step of correlating the learning component of the learning activities to one or more educational components of the set of educational components further comprises the step of manually selecting the educational components to which the learning component is correlated. The grouping, the set of educational components, the first set of correlations, and the second set of correlations are stored on a storage device coupled to the server. Preferably the storage device is a database. The database is distributed into more than one physical location. The method further includes the step of establishing an internet connection with the server to select the learning component to be correlated. The learning component of the learning activities is a lesson plan generated by teachers or authors. The learning component is generated by an authoring tool wherein the authoring tool is coupled to the storage device. The method further comprises the step of establishing an internet connection with the server to utilize the authoring tool.
In yet another aspect of the present invention, a correlating system for generating correlations between a plurality of sets of educational requirements and learning activities includes means for aggregating educational requirements from one or more of the sets of educational requirements into a grouping of educational requirements having a common factor, means for generating a set of educational components including the educational requirements within the grouping, means for correlating the set of educational components to the grouping of educational requirements to generate a first set of correlations, and means for correlating a learning component of the learning activities to one or more educational components of the set of educational components to generate a second set of correlations. The means for generating sets of correlations is included within a server. The means for correlating a learning component of the learning activities to one or more educational components of the set of educational components further comprises means for manually selecting the educational components to which the learning component is correlated. A connection is established with a computer system and the server to access the correlating system and to provide and select the learning components to be correlated. The connection is established between the computer system and the server over the internet. The correlating system further includes means for storing the grouping, the set of educational components, the first set of correlations, and the second set of correlations.
In still yet another aspect of the present invention, a correlating system for generating correlations between a plurality of sets of educational requirements and learning activities includes an interface circuit configured to establish a connection with a remote computer system, and a correlating server coupled to the interface circuit to aggregate educational requirements from one or more of the sets of educational requirements into a grouping of educational requirements having a common factor, provide a set of educational components, correlate the set of educational components to the grouping of educational requirements to generate a first set of correlations, and correlate a learning component of the learning activities to one or more educational components of the set of educational components to generate a second set of correlations. The correlating system further includes a storage device coupled to the correlating server to store the grouping, the set of educational components, the first set of correlations, and the second set of correlations. The connection is established with the remote computer system and the interface circuit over the internet to allow users to access the correlating server and to provide and select the learning components to be correlated.
In another aspect of the present invention, a network of devices for generating correlations between a plurality of sets of educational requirements and learning activities includes one or more computer systems configured to communicate with other systems, and a correlating server configured to couple to the one or more computer systems to aggregate educational requirements from one or more of the sets of educational requirements into a grouping of educational requirements having a common factor, provide a set of educational components, correlate the set of educational components to the grouping of educational requirements to generate a first set of correlations, and correlate a learning component of the learning activities to one or more educational components of the set of educational components to generate a second set of correlations. The network of devices further includes a storage device coupled to the correlating server to store the grouping, the set of educational components, the first set of correlations, and the second set of correlations. The one or more computer systems and the correlating server are coupled together over the internet to allow users to access the correlating server and to provide and select the learning components to be correlated.
In yet another aspect of the present invention, a method of generating a correlation between a learning component of a learning activity and a plurality of sets of educational requirements includes the steps of selecting one or more educational components to which the learning component is correlated, correlating the learning component to the selected educational components to generate a first set of correlations, correlating the selected educational components to one or more groupings of educational requirements having a common factor to generate a second set of correlations, and correlating the one or more groupings to the plurality of sets of educational requirements to generate a third set of correlations. The step of selecting one or more educational components is performed manually. The steps of correlating the learning component to the selected educational components, correlating the selected educational components to one or more groupings of educational requirements having a common factor, and correlating the one or more groupings to the plurality of sets of educational requirements are performed by a server. The selected educational components, the first set of correlations, the second set of correlations, and the third set of correlations are stored on a storage device coupled to the server. The method further includes the step of establishing an internet connection with the server to select the educational components to be correlated. The learning component of the learning activities is a lesson plan generated by teachers or authors.